January 14, 2009

Summaries of 9/11 Commission Interviews Released

The National Archives today released a set of records the 9/11 Commission gave it. It did so today because the commission told it it had to wait until 2009 to do so, presumably on the off chance that people would have forgotten about it all by then. The records are in two groups, Memorandums for the Record (MFR), which are available online, and other records, which are not available online.

I have been trawling through the ones that are available online and I have learned a few things of interest.

(1) Stacks of the MFR are not actually available. Either they have not been reviewed yet (pending), or have been withdrawn because they are very classified, or they have been made available, but have had the bejesus redacted out of them.

(2) Two of the two key MFR, of interviews of Tom Wilshire, a CIA officer involved in just about everything that went “wrong” before 9/11, and Dina Corsi, one of his most willing little helpers, are missing. Not pending, not withdrawn due to classification, not redacted to death. Just not there. You can tell this because there are no MFR that could be theirs for the relevant dates. For example, the MFR for former NSA Director Michael Hayden is still pending, as is the MFR for Ali Soufan, head of the FBI’s Cole bombing probe, and Hayden and Soufan’s names are not associated with the records at the Archives’ website. However, you can tell which MFR are theirs by the designation (NSA, FBI) and the dates of the interviews—which you can get from the small-type endnotes in the 9/11 Commission report. I have written to the National Archives to see what they are doing. I expect Wilshire and Corsi’s MFR are “lost.”

(3) The commission interviewed SunTrust employees about an alert they issued about alleged hijacker pilot Marwan Alshehhi when he tried to cash a check, but the bank would not let him. However, the alert was deleted from the system the next day for reasons that could not be explained. Here’s the relevant section from the MFR:

A companion computerized hold was placed that day on SunTrust’s electronic teller information system for one month, from June 11, 2001 to July. 11, 2001.2 Under SunTrust’s computerized system, any time a teller accessed Mr. Alshehhi’s account number, the teller would be instructed to contact “Lisa” at SunTrust’s Venice, Florida branch, where the account was opened. The computer instructions also indicated that there was a question about Mr. Alshehhi’ s identification. The alert was deleted from the computerized system on June 12, 2001. Over the past several days, we have been able to reconstruct both the computerized alert, attached as Tab B, and a record of its deletion, at Tab C. However, we are unable to determine who deleted the alert or why it was deleted.

(4) Here the story of Atta’s and Alomari’s bags not getting loaded onto American 11::

Mr. (redacted) stated that at 7:30 (redacted) the crew chief for Flight 11 received a call from a passenger service representative, stating that a passenger had just boarded Flight 11, and the passenger service representative wanted to determine if the passenger’s two suitcases had arrived from US Airways. (redacted) told the passenger service representative, also known as a gate agent, that that the suitcases had arrived, but would not be put on Flight 11, because the baggage compartment had already been locked for departure. (redacted) noted that it was unusual for the passenger service representative to call the ramp crew, unless the affected passenger has asked about the baggage.

With respect to the reporting of Basnan’s having hosted a party in Washington, DC in 1992 for Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman (the “Blind Sheikh”), Basnan maintained (as in his final law enforcement interview in the US, on November 17, 2002) that this was a case of mistaken identity. Specifically, he claimed to have employed the services of a sheikh – selected at random from a list of over a dozen Al-Azzar graduates (all of whom dressed alike and wore dark glasses) – to preside at a party marking the 7th day of his son’s birth, and that the sheikh who performed the ceremony was not Sheikh Omar at all and could see. Basnan contends that a CIA agent came to his house shortly after the party and agreed with him that the sheikh who had attended was not Sheikh Omar.

One might reasonably ask what the CIA agent was doing discussing the Blind Sheikh with Basnan if the Blind Sheikh had not actually been there?

The interview was conducted by Dieter Snell, who did not think much of Basnan’s credibility:

The interview failed to yield any new information of note. Instead, in the writer’s opinion, it established beyond cavil the witness’ utter lack of credibility on virtually every material subject. This assessment is based on: the witness’ demeanor, which engendered a combination of confrontation, evasiveness, and speechmaking, presumably for the benefit. of his Mabahith audience; his repudiation of statements made by him on prior occasions; and the inherent incredibility of many of his assertions when viewed in light of the totality of the available evidence. Accordingly, this MFR contains only a general summary of his statements, and, in the writer’s judgment, should not be used the basis for any factual assertion by the Commission.

(11) The Able Danger MFR–for the interview at Bagram in Afghanistan in late 2003–is here. It is very short.

(12) I don’t see anything that could be the MFR for FAA administrator Jane Garvey. Neither can I see anything that could be the MFR for absentee General Montague Winfield. Their names are not on the list and I don’t see anything that would match up with the dates they were interviewed, as given in the endnotes to the commission’s final report.

(13) The interviews of people a Cleveland ATC, etc. tend to have statements along the lines of “XXX did not recall seeing any military aircraft near UAL 93 at the time it crashed.” I get the feeling the commission thought it might have been shot down and was asking about it.

“Marr noted that one of the chat logs presented to him by Commission staff ‘doesn’t look right’ (Commission staff noted this beforehand, but did not present to Marr as such.)”

Later, about why the military’s first timeline was off:

“Marr noted that the Dictaphone DAT times are off, and this led to a misconception with the time frame. He commented that NORAD asked for details to prove that they did not shoot down UAL 93 shortly after 9/11. He noted that Col. Speicher and Col. Khom worked towards putting the initial information together. But because of the damage that occurred to the tapes during the transcription process they did not re-examine the tapes until very recently.”

Also

“Marr was emphatic that the mistakes in the data points were specifically made to show that they did not shoot down flight 93.”

What does that mean??!! It sounds like he is saying the tapes are doctored?

(17) On the day of the attacks, the NY Fire Department told the electricity company to cut of the power to WTC 7 at 4:15 p.m., as they thought it was going to collapse.

(18 ) Interview with Steve Usher of CONR (part of NORAD): “Usher noted that until the exercise was terminated, information was entered on the exercise chat log regarding the attacks as well as the real world chat logs.”

(19) Again from the Marr interview. It has been suggested that the hijackers were able to fly around the US for a total of almost two hours because NORAD was postured to deal with incoming aircraft from overseas, not domestic threats. That’s what Marr told the commission:

Marr commented that NEADS was using fourteen radar, and many radio sites. He noted that these sites are focused around the perimeter of the coast. He noted that the radar coverage varied by the sites themselves. He noted that the sites were optimized for their off the coast vision.

Howver, the commission wasn’t having any of it:

Commission staff presented to Marr that the flights that were hijacked on 9/11 were within the physical capabilities of the radar NEADS is linked to.

(20) The MFR for the Kevin Nasypany interview about NEADS’ response to the attacks also comments on the chat logs, describing what the problem with one of them was and that the real world and exercise stuff was in the same chat log:

Nasypany identified chat log information for Commission staff. He confirmed that some “real world” information was interjected into the exercise chat log, and did not know why there are disjointed time and day entries in the same exercise chat log.

OK, that’s all for now. If anybody lives in the Washington area and could go to the archives and get some of the interesting things that are not online, please let me know.

3) Hard to believe the 9/11 Commission didn’t interview the Chief of the UBLU. Middleton joined the UBLU in ’99 and was Unit Chief from 6/28/01 though 9/10/01. For some reason Watson didn’t call him back after the attacks and instead had Kevin Foust take over the unit.

(a) No interviews with airline personnel who saw off the passengers board the four aircraft on 9/11. As a consequence, we have no evidence that anyone boarded any of these four aircraft at all, or if anyone boarded an aircraft, where did the boarding take place and on which aircraft the “passengers” and “hijackers” boarded?
(b) No interview with Johnelle Bryant, who has had a long conversation with Mohamed Atta at her office in the Florida Department of Agriculture
(c) No interview with fireworkers who experienced, saw or heard multiple explosions in the WTC
(d) No interview with Larry Silverstein

I also noted that most MFR are couched in third person language, which means that the language used by the interviewee is absent. It has been “translated” by the drafter. Thus we do not really know what the interviewees actually said and whether the report faithfully reproduces what they said.

A number of MFR refer to notes made by airline personnel immediately after they experienced something on 9/11. These notes have been destroyed or are kept in secret. The interviews with these people took, however, place 2-3 years after the event. Why should such an interview override what the person actually wrote on the very day of the events? There is no other explanation for this fact than this provides opportunities to hide or change facts.

I am in the Washington area and would be delighted to go to the archives and look through the material not posted online. Please feel free to contact me via my email address, and indicated any specifications. FYI, I have been studying and writing about the 911 matter, specifically focused on Saudi intelligence involvement and coverup of that role for a number of years.

You do not mention any Commission contact with the two communications companies that handled the 40-odd distress telephone calls received from the four rogue aircraft, Verizon Airfone and AT&T Claircom. Both companies were collaborating with the Bush administration NSA in late February, 2001 (according to Joseph Nacchio, non-participating boss of Qwest who was thrown in jail for punishment) to conduct then-illegal unauthorised telephone surveillance of the US public. Obviously, such surveillance would be fully digitally automated and would include digital monitoring of all language using commercially available hard- and sof-tware. Therefore, targeted individuals could be monitored for family details (names of nearest relatives, phone numbers, etc.) Furthermore, only a few minutes’ of recorded voice are required to create a clone of said voice to be used for creating scripted vocalisation. Such information could have been assembled covertly and used in the preparation of a script for staging calls to friends/relatives “from the hijacked airplane”. Callers would have told call recipients that they were speaking by cellular phone in order to explain most of the calls being shorter than the average three minutes, some made repeatedly and some being terminated abruptly. Nearly all call recipients reported their calls to have come from cellular telephones, some validating their attribution by referring to their loved one’s cell number being seen on a read-out screen. Faking numbers on phone screens is known as “spoofing” and is common in business for redirecting return calls. “Spoofing” is also widely used by neo-fascist political groups to fake announcements by political opponents, giving false information. The Moussaoui evidence concerning the phone calls, available on the internet, denies nearly all the cellular telephone calls, so attributed both by the call recipients and by blue-chip mass media such as the NYT, WP, AP and NBC News in spite of the fact that cellular telephones never worked at cruising altitude down to 10,000 feet, and were only enabled by the expensive installation in aircraft of pico-cell technology in 2004. Deena Burnett, formerly cabin crew, knew this but nvertheless claimed cellular calls from her husband because his voice told her and as a good Roman Catholic she believed her husband. Verizon Airfone put a trace on the infamous Todd Beamer call, Airfone operator Lisa Jefferson admits it in her book (Called), and she also reveals inadvertently that no information on the call initially appeared on her screen. The only reason a ticket-sales office in North Carolina held the Betty Ong voice for twenty-five minutes without patching her through to somepone who could respond was in order to carry out a trace. Corporate control centres knew those calls were faked. In fact ALL the evidence for the calls made on credit-card operated seatback phones is in the credit card transactions archive and could be produced but is not. Failing to interview Verizon and AT&T at all in an investigation which was supposed to give a “full account” of what happened is a blatant cover-up. In short, I am saying that the telephone calls that “proved” the presence of hijackers aboard the rogue aircraft were faked. Get used to it, America. You have been conned. Your war on terror is a massive scam.